Mental Flosshttp://mentalfloss.com/node/14567/atom.xml2016-12-09T13:38:35+00:00http://mentalfloss.com/article/14567/first-he-inspired-15-bands-now-car2006-07-27T17:07:06+00:002006-07-27T17:12:01+00:00First He Inspired 1.5 Bands, Now a Car?!Mangesh

mental_floss' favorite inventor Nikola Tesla, who famously dreamed up AC current amongst a million other things, and inspired the names for the rock bands Tesla and AC/DC (or at least the first-half of the name AC/DC), now has a ridiculously cool electric car named for him.

Tesla Motors, dubbed the Silicon Valley's first real car company, is debuting a sexy new sports car codenamed DarkStar. Apparently, the vehicle can run for 250 miles without needing a charge, fueling costs run about $.01 per mile, it handles silently, goes 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds and is powered by lithium ion laptop batteries. Insane! Even crazier, "the Tesla Roadster engine has no moving parts save a copper-and-steel rotor that spins through the force of a magnetic field." Of course, the new car does have it's down sides: it takes about 3.5 hours to recharge after your 250 mile jaunt, and runs about $80,000 right now. Still, CEO Martin Eberhard expects prices to go down and efficiency to go up the same way it has for computers. He's rustled up investments from a wide variety of head honchos (ex-eBay guru Jeff Skoll, PayPal's Elon Musk, and Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin), praise from Gov. Schwarzenegger, hired engineers from the British car company Lotus, and even plans on releasing a family sedan by 2008, all in the name of Tesla. Our grins couldn't be wider.